Tactics of Interfacing by Ksenia Fedorova

Author:Ksenia Fedorova [Fedorova, Ksenia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Media aesthetics; digital art; media art; interface; interfaciality; sensing technologies; digital self; affect; feedback; artificial intelligence; self; facial recognition; body-image; body-data-image; biofeedback; body schema; neurointerface; proprioception; augmented reality; AR; mixed reality; facial expressions analysis; quantified organic; algorithmic self; algorithmic organic; Eliza effect; locative media; psychological profiling; cybernetics; cybernetic self; metastability; interface effect; simulation; motion capture; mirror image; mirror neurons; mental image; conversational agent; programmability; encoding; transcoding.
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2020-07-17T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 3.3

Chris Marker, Dialector (1988).

Figure 3.4

Chris Marker, Dialector (1988). Dialector in conversation: “PROJECTION and MEETING,” performance with Etienne Sandrin, curator at the Centre Pompidou (Paris), October 2013, as part of “Memories of the Future: Chris Marker’s Trials and Travels,” Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF), Yamagata, Japan.

Dialector explores the capabilities of computer coding as a technique for artistic purposes. For instance, the owners of the type of computers for which the project was intended at the time of its making were, for the most part, (self-)educated in programming; hence they could understand not only what the machine was saying but potentially “how” it had been made to say that.28 Similar to Weizenbaum, Marker used some keywords as markers for the choice of a response, but rather than applying transformation rules, he let the program pick the answers randomly from a database. At the same time, the piece does deal with coding on a conceptual level, approaching it as a method of communicating messages by organizing and scripting them in certain ways (even if the primary logical operation is randomness). The “Computer” confesses, “I speak metaphorically,” and “If you don’t face truth, truth will face you,” which betrays Marker’s own voice, sense of irony, and his love for playing with avatars and identities. A filmmaker renowned for his consistent commitment to the aesthetics of the essay film, Marker subliminally brings principles of cinematic production into the coding of his enigmatic and aphoristic statements. The phrases serve here as images (they can even be called “mental images,” analogous to the mental images discussed in the previous chapter). Mixed with the participant’s remarks and questions, the phrases form a montage, an abstract narrative, conceptual, poetic, and fluid in its nature. The connections between the lines may be random, but the mind of the human participant will make them work as a whole, just as a film viewer perceives combinations of images by creating additional associations that vary from one individual spectator to another. These subjective perspectives would be informed by subtly differing assumptions about the cause-effect connections. Another cinematic feature, and one of the signatures of Marker’s films, is his voice-over narration, a layer of the authorial subjective perspective that frames the perception of the images. Since Dialector is interactive, there are two authorial voices here, partly competing and partly collaborating, as seen in a conversation with the filmmaker Agnès Varda (figure 3.5).29 The “reality” that they “narrate” can only be a fictional one generated jointly by the randomness of precoded responses and by the imagination and inventiveness of the human participant. It is thus another example of a “mixed” reality that in this case combines Marker’s database of statements with the elements of the biography of a human, his or her character, mood predisposition, sense of humor, and so on.

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